Zadie Smith's Third Novel: On Beauty
Zadie Smith's first novel White Teeth (Penguin) set critics on the edge of their seats. Now that she has reached the ripe age of thirty she is once again back on track and solidly claiming her place in the literary firmament with her third work, On Beauty: A Novel.(Penguin) This work gathers narrative steam from the clash between two radically different families, with a plot that explicitly parallels Howards End. (E.M. Forrester is a favorite)
September 14, 2005 —
"Set on both sides of the Atlantic, Zadie Smith's third novel is 
a brilliant analysis of family life, the institution of marriage, intersections of the personal and political, and an honest look at people's deceptions. It is also, as you might expect, very funny indeed." — Joseph O'Neil in a review for Atlantic Monthly.
Publisher's Weekly gave On Beauty a starred review saying, "an intrepid attempt to explore the sad stuff of adult life, 21st century — style: adultery, identity crises and emotional suffocation, interracial and intraracial global conflicts and religious zealotry."
Further Links
White Teeth, (Vintage 2001) White Teeth is a formidably ambitious debut. First novelist Zadie Smith takes on race, sex, class, history, and the minefield of gender politics, and such is her wit and inventiveness that these weighty subjects seem effortlessly light.
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